ions

Trapped Yb⁺ ions of various isotopes have been employed in various fields of AMO research, including atomic clocks [1], quantum information processing [2], and new physics searches [3,4]. Compared with other singly-charged ytterbium isotopes, ¹⁷³Yb⁺ is a particularly promising candidate for extending and advancing these research directions due to its large nuclear spin of 5/2 [5,6,7]. However, high-precision spectroscopy  has so far been impeded by the more complex atomic structure of ¹⁷³Yb⁺.

In this talk, we will first discuss our approaches to overcome challenges in laser cooling and state preparation of a single ¹⁷³Yb⁺ ion confined in a Paul trap.  We will then discuss measurements of the hyperfine structures of the ²S_1/2 and ²D_3/2 states and the electric quadrupole clock transition between them. We will also present the ongoing search for the ²S_1/2 → ²F_7/2 electric octupole clock transition.

Reference

[1] N. Huntemann et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 063001 (2016)

[2] S. A. Guo et al., Nature 630, 613 (2024)

[3] C. Sanner et al., Nature 567, 204 (2019)

[4] M. Filzinger et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 253001 (2023)

[5] D. T. C. Allcock et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 119, 214002 (2021)

[6] Y. A. Dzuba et al., Phys. Rev. A 93, 052517 (2016)

[7] V. V. Flambaum et al., Phys. Rev. A 96, 012516(2017)